Comments
on the FOX Moonlanding Hoax special

FOX Special - "Conspiracy Theory: DID WE LAND ON THE MOON?"

Fox aired a special on the moonlanding hoax on Thursday night,
February 15, 2001 at 9:00PM ET (8:00PM PT). I had hoped the special might
include a skeptical treatment, but all hopes were dashed as I
watched this program unfold. They presented the arguments of the
"True believers" without any significant skeptical rebuttal.
Below are some of my comments, many made on the fly as I watched
the program.
The program claims to "Let the viewer decide for themselves" about
whether there was a hoax or not, but fails to present a balanced
program of pro and anti hoax, giving the viewers a highly biased
pro-hoax set of evidence on which to base their conclusions.

Jim Scotti, Planetary Scientist, University of Arizona, 2001 Feb. 15

FOX, in all their wisdom, is re-airing this crummy program again on
March 21, 2001. Wonderful.

Jim Scotti, 2001 Mar. 20

Check out my article in the News and Comment section of the May/June
2001 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer reviewing the FOX moonlanding
special.

Scott Grissom, son of Gus and Betty Grissom, wife, thinks accident was
murder.

Boris Valentinovich Volinov - "Russian cosmonaut".

Anti Hoax:

Brian Welch, "NASA spokesman"

Howard McCurdy, "Space Historian, American University"

Julian Scheer, "Former NASA spokesman"

Paul Fjeld, "NASA LEM Specialist"

Claims by Hoax proponents and arguments for the Hoax as presented by FOX:

No stars in the images

As usual, this was about the first argument used by the Hoax
believers to debunk the lunar landing. We see no stars in the
images because the images are exposed for the bright sunlit
scenes. The stars are too faint to show up on the images due
to their short exposure.

Likelyhood of success too small

Kaysing claimed that the chance of a successful landing on the
moon was calculated to be 0.017 percent! Therefore the landings
had to be faked. Presumably those odds were from some early
report, based on who knows what assumptions. Anyone know where
he may have gotten that estimate or did he make the number up
out of whole cloth?

Capricorn One

The Producer of Capricorn One figures that NASA's huge $40 Billion (sic)
budget compared to Capricorn One's measily $4.0 Million budget
could easily fake the moonlandings. Comparisons are made between the
similarity of the moonlanding scenes to those found in the movie -
as
if perhaps the moonlanding scenes copied those of the movie....
Of course, the Apollo landings occured between 5 and 8 years
before the film and were used as a
model for the film in order to make it look more convincing to the
moviegoing audience. Making claims that the technology was in place,
the FOX producers seem to think that film making technology of the 1960s
was up to creating such a convincing hoax despite vast amounts of evidence
to the contrary as a simple examination of even the best modern sci-fi
movies will demonstrate. Sit next to any "science geek" (like me!) in
your favorite sci-fi movie and you will hear uncounted comments about
how this scene or that are incorrect if we are invited to do such (no,
I don't normally talk to my neighbor during movies...).

Area 51

Kaysing claims that Area 51 is where they filmed the Apollo hoax
and similarities to the desert surrounding Area 51 as well as craters
near the site to the lunar landscape is evidence of that. And of
course, it's off limits today because presumably the sets are still
there. I wonder why that might be, considering the top secret
research that is apparently being done in the area.

Astronaut deaths

The show claimed that 10 astronauts died "under mysterious
circumstances" during Apollo.
Mysterious apparently includes accidents in high performance jet aircraft
and accidents in new untested spacecraft. Astronaut deaths:
Ed Givens (car accident), Ted Freeman (T-38 crash), C. C. Williams
(T-38 accident), Elliot See and Charlie Bassett (T-38 accident),
Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee (Apollo 1 fire). So who
are the other 2? According to the show, two other pilots were
shown, but they weren't astronauts, at least by NASA standards.
One was X-15 pilot Mike Adams who was the only X-15 pilot killed during
the X-15 flight test program. Mike Adams, though not a NASA astronaut,
had flown his X-15 above 50 miles which is considered space and
technically, he could be considered an astronaut along with a number of
the other X-15 pilots.
The other was Robert Lawrence, a would
be Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory pilot who died in a jet crash
shortly after reporting for duty to that program.

Later, they claim that the Apollo 1 fire may have been a
murder conspiracy to silence Gus Grissom's outspoken criticism of
the Space Program. The FOX producers obviously have not researched
Gus Grissom at all. He was enthusiastic about the program and very
aware of the dangers of spaceflight while trying to make his spacecraft
as safe as possible. His hanging a lemon on the Apollo simulators
has been widely misinterpretted as disatisfaction with the entire
Apollo program.

They also claim that the death of NASA worker Thomas Baron was
a murder and a coverup of a 500 page report on the Apollo 1
accident. A more likely version of the story is that the
man might have committed a murder/suicide in distress over the
loss of the crew. It's amazing that more workers didn't do the
same.

These unfounded claims of murder and conspiracy are libelous,
particularly as they lack any significant evidence to support
those claims.

No Blast crater under the Lunar Module

The Hoax believers claim the LM descent stage used its full thrust of
10,000 pounds at lunar landing and that it should excavate a large
blast crater under the LM. At landing in the low lunar gravity (which
is 1/6 of Earth's gravity), the LM
only needed a throttled down to about 3,000 pounds of thrust. The blast
of rocket exhaust is not nearly as large as the 10,000 pounds claimed
and results in a scouring of the topmost layer of lunar soil along the
ground path and under the LM. The LM had 6 foot long landing probes
under 3 of the 4 footpads and when any of the probes contacted the
surface, the
crew shut down the engine so that the LM would fall the last few feet to
the surface, so the engine was more than 6 feet above the surface at its
closest. You can even see effects of the blast in some of the lunar
images including any taken under the LM and one set taken on Apollo 12
which shows a disturbance along the ground path of the LM before
landing. The dust is clearly visible flying out at high speed away from
the LM prior to touchdown in all of the lunar landing films taken from
the LM cabin windows during approach and landing. Given that the descent
stage engine bell is about 5 feet across at the bottom, and that thrust
of the engine at touchdown was about 3,000 pounds, that blast pressure
of the rocket exhaust was only about 1 pound per square inch.

Why would we expect to find a blast crater under the LM? Does a garden
hose sprayed at high pressure into the dirt create a blast crater?
It certainly blows away some of the surface dirt in a radial direction
and will create a small depression or hole, but not a crater in the
form that the haox proponents suggest. There is even an Earthly
example of a rocket landing on dirt. The DC-X was a test flight program
of a vertical takeoff and landing rocket. On one of its last flights,
it made an emergency landing outside of the pad area. Despite the
hydrogen/oxygen engine producing a thrust of some 60,000 pounds, the
engine produced a mark on the desert floor that was barely recognizable.

No dust on the LM footpads

Kaysing cites the lack of dust on the LM footpads as evidence for fakery
without considering the high velocity of the dust blown away by the
descent engine. That dust flew far away from the lander and very little
of it settled near the LM itself.
Consider the flight of a dust particle blown off at an initial velocity
of 100 meters/second (a little over 220 miles per hour) and at an angle
above the horizon of 10 degrees. It's horizontal initial velocity is
92.5 meters/second while its upward initial velocity is 17.4 meters/sec.
In the atmosphere-less 1/6 lunar gravity, it would fly upward for
10.6 seconds before reaching its maximum height of 92 meters above
the lunar surface. About 10.6 seconds later, it impacts on the lunar
surface almost 2.1 kilometers away from the lunar module!

Lack of sound from the LM descent engine

Kaysing claims that you should hear the sound of the descent engine in
the audio from the landings. There are several obvious problems with
this hypothesis. First, the engine is many feet away in a vacuum so that
the sounds would have to be transmitted through the spacecraft structure
itself. Second, the microphones used are insulated inside of the
spacesuits worn by the astronauts. Third, the microphones are worn next
to the astronauts mouth and are designed only to pick up sound from its
immediate vicinity and are noise canceling by design.

Footprints appear around the LM despite the rocket engine scouring
the lunar surface during landing

This question is related closely to the question regarding the thrust
level of the LM descent engine. The hoax proponents exaggerate the
thrust level of the engine during landing, claiming that it fires with
a thrust of 10,000 pounds when in fact, the engine was throttled and
only had to fire at a thrust level that nearly balanced the 1/6 gravity
weight of the LM at the moment of touchdown. Dust was blown away, but
the regolith on the lunar surface was found to be many meters thick
while the engine would have blown perhaps a few centimeters of dust
away from the area immediately under the engine at the moment of landing.

Pictures of spacesuited crewmembers inside a building

The hoax proponents often cite pictures of crewmen with background walls,
overhead lights, hoses, tiled floors, etc., as evidence for the hoax.
These photographs are common and were obtained during crew training for
the actual flights. No attempt is made by NASA to claim that these
images were taken on the moon and the LM, rovers, experiments, etc.,
used for training
are training replicas or flight spares, rarely actual flight hardware.
Some flight hardware also appears, often while it is being stowed for flight or
when it is being fit to crewmen.
That the hoax proponents claim that these training photos are evidence
of the hoax shows just how little research the hoax believers actually
have done on how NASA actually carried out the Apollo program.
The photographs which NASA presents as having been taken on the lunar
surface look far different from these training photos. Lighting is
different. The training hardware such as the LM are different (usually
they are prototypes designed to be used for training and do not have
the gold foil we see on the moon amongst other things). Photographs of
training sessions outside show blue sky reflected in visors as well as
tan or orange colored soil and plants and technicians assisting the
training.

The "Protoype LM" accident

FOX claimed that a "Prototype LM" was tested on Earth by Neil Armstrong
and that during one pre-mission test flight, Armstrong was unable to
control the vehicle and had to eject. The vehicle in question was
strictly a training vehicle with a jet engine to simulate the 1/6 lunar
gravity and to simulate the thrust of the LM descent engine. The Apollo
astronauts used the LLTV (Lunar Landing Training Vehicle) to learn how
to maneuver the actual LM. They also found flying helicopters to be
a useful analog to flying the LM, as well as the Lunar Landing Research
Vehicle and high fidelity simulators.

Again, a small amount of research would have shown the producers of the
FOX program that the LLTV was not a prototype of the LM, but instead
a training device.

FOX continues by asking how the "untested" LM could land flawlessly 6
times when the "Prototype" had so much trouble on Earth. The LLTV
was very different from the LM, not a prototype and the "untested" LM
was far from untested. Every component of the LM was tested over and over
again during the developement of the LM. The descent and ascent engines
were perfected through a test firing program carried out at a NASA White
Sands test facility. Other componenents, like the landing gear, were
tested under simulated load conditions even before they were test flown
in space. Before Apollo 11 took the Eagle all the way to the lunar
surface, Apollo 9 tested the first manned LM in Earth orbit and Apollo 10
took the 2nd manned LM all the way to within about 50,000 feet of the
surface of the moon in a nearly complete dress rehearsal of Apollo 11.
The LM flew flawlessly to the
moon because of the hard work of thousands of workers over many years
during the design, development construction and testing of the spacecraft.

No rocket plume in the video of the ascent stage liftoff

Kaysing claims that we should see a rocket plume from the engine of
the LM ascent stage during liftoff video footage. The LM ascent
stage engine was a hypergolic rocket engine which burned fuels that
burn on contact with each other, making them very reliable since
they don't need an ignitor. These fuels burn with only faintly
visible exhaust
plumes. If one looks up the engine bell, you would see probably a
bright blue light in the combustion chamber, but the plume itself
is nearly transparent. The Titan rockets which launched the Gemini
spacecraft also used the same type of fuel. With very
much larger thrust levels, this rocket produced a plume that was
nowhere near as spectacular as the plumes we saw on the Saturn V
rocket or on the spectacular Space Shuttle (which is dominated by
the solid rocket boosters at liftoff).
The faint plume that would probably be visible to the human eye
if someone were there to see it is not obvious enough for the
lower quality of the TV camera used to capture the images of the
lunar liftoffs on Apollo 15, 16 and 17.

Flags waving in the breeze

The flags "wave in the breeze" of an astronaut touching and
manipulating the flag and flagpole. Notice in each example of
the flag waving, the astronaut is still moving it or has just
finished adjusting the flag. The flag wobbles for a moment as the
force applied to the flag and pole damps out and then it comes
to rest. There is a film from one of the liftoffs from the
LM cabin which shows the flag waving in the breeze of the rocket
exhaust as well (and perhaps you can see the flags move in the
rocket exhaust from the rover TV cameras, but those are far
away and the cameras tried to follow the ascent stage...).

The flags look as if they are waving in the breeze when not being
adjusted or blown by the ascent engine thanks to a metal rod that
runs along the top of the flag that holds it out as if being
blown in the breeze. This is a well documented piece of equipment.

Poor quality of video

Claims were made that NASA purposefully provided very poor video
footage of the first moonwalks. NASA didn't pay too much attention
to using video cameras early in Apollo - the first such camera was
carried aboard Apollo 7 as almost an afterthought, but the public
ate it up, so they added it to later flights. The camera used on
Apollo 11 was a black and white camera. Later missions used better
cameras, but the portable video cameras of the day tended to be
bulky and power hogs. Weight and power were at a premium on the
lunar surface.

Double speed of lunar video looks like it was filmed on Earth

Well, sure, that looks good, but does it really work? Turns out that you
can't accurately simulate the lunar flight of objects in a vacuum on Earth
without modern
computer graphics techniques. If you shoot film on Earth and slow it down
by a factor of two, the 1/6 lunar gravity is not simulated properly.
Imagine for example a particle of dust thrown at a 45 degree angle off of
the rover tires at the speed the rover was traveling, say about 10
kilometers per hour (I haven't actually measured the ejection direction of
dust off the tires, but this is a good first approximation to estimate the
height of the rovers roostertails of dust). 10 kph is 6.2 mph or 9.1
ft/sec. Thrown at a 45 degree angle, the upward velocity is then 6.4 ft/sec
(as is its horizontal velocity). In the 1/6 lunar gravity, it should then
fly upward for 1.2 seconds to a height of 3.8 feet. It would fly outward
for twice this time before landing back on the surface about 15.5
feet from its launch site. In the case of a simulated film as the hoax
proponents suggest running at half speed, the same film would have the rover
traveling twice as fast on Earth with full Earth gravity in effect. So the
initial launch veleocity of the dust would be 12.8 ft/sec. It would fly
upward for 0.4 seconds in Earth gravity (or 0.8 seconds in the slowed video)
and reach a height of 2.6 feet, landing some 10.2 feet away. In other
words, you can tell the difference if you actually measure the speed of the
dust or thrown object.

How can an astronaut on Earth wearing a bulky simulated moonsuit run at such
high speeds as you'd need them to run to simulate the lunar imagery. The
highest documented running speeds on the moon were about 5.4 km/hour.
That's a rate of about a 9 minute mile in a bulky suit. I haven't seen
any astronauts trying to run in their suits in straight 1-g conditions.

Difficulty of using cameras in spacesuits/Photographs "absolutely perfect"

3 words: Practice, practice, practice. The Apollo astronauts trained over
and over again on Earth before their flights. By the time they flew, they
had shot hundreds of practice pictures, learning how to line up photos without
a viewfinder. They also had preset exposures and focus positions easily
settable with their bulky gloves for different types of shots. Also, they
used fairly high f-stops on their camera lens to maximize the depth of
field, so focus wasn't as critical when setting up a shot. Given all that,
the photographs are far from perfect. Exposures are uneven, mostly due to
lighting issues and there are plenty of badly composed and out of focus
images amongst the thousands obtained. The pictures we see are often the
best of the lot - that's why they were picked for public release. An
examination of the images on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal will show you
what they tend to look like. Anyone who claims all the Apollo lunar
surface photos are perfect has not looked at very many of them.

Shadows go in wrong directions, not parallel

The hoax proponents apparently don't understand simple
convergence - the disappearing point which elementary school art students
learn about in order to draw roads or railroad tracks disappearing into the
distance. The shadows, though parallel from overhead, look to be going in
different directions from the perspective of a person on the ground. You can
see the same effects here on Earth. The most used image by the hoaxers is
from Apollo 14 where the Lunar Module appears in the distance to be casting a
horizontal shadow while the shadows of the rocks in the foreground are angled
towards the camera. However, if you look closely at the LM shadow and the LM
itself, you'll see the LM partly lit - similarly to the rocks in the
foreground along the same direction and you can see that the shadow is not
horizontal, but is greatly foreshortened. As usual, just a casual
examination of the evidence contradicts the hoaxers argument.

The lunar surface is also very undulating with hills and craters in great
abundance. Shadows appear longer if they go down a slope on the sunward side of
a crater or hill or appear shorter on a slope that faces into the sun. Hills
and craters can also change the apparent direction of a shadow to make it look
non-parallel with adjacent shadows.

You can see details in the shadows

Although the sun is the primary light source on the Moon (the Earth also
lights the moon somewhat since it is about 13 times the surface area as
viewed from the moon compared to the moon from Earth, but also is 5 times
brighter per unit area), the shadows are lit up by scattered sunlight off
of the surrounding lunar surface and equipment. You don't need an
atmosphere to fill in the shadows on the moon. Any photographer knows how
to use objects to reflect light into the shadows to make the shadowed areas
more visible. Photographers use efficient items like reflecting umbrellas
or white boards. On the moon, the surrounding lunar surface, mountains,
astronauts, rovers, and even the LM itself scatter light into the shadowed
areas of the moon and equipment. How come neither of
the two photographic experts used
by the FOX show to examine apparent photographic anomalies were able to
think of this obvious solution to this shadow "problem"?

Identical backgrounds in photographs from different places

The hoax proponents cite cases of finding the same exact
background mountains in images taken from vastly different
places around a landing site. In the case of the FOX special,
they showed a picture of the LM with mountains in the background
and a second image without the LM with the "exact" background
mountains. The mountains in question are several miles away
from the LM. Two pictures taken a few hundred feet apart
can have a vastly different foreground (like LM and no LM)
while having what appears to be exactly the same background.
There's no mystery to that. Tucson has mountains surrounding
the city and amazingly, from the University of Arizona Campus
area, one can travel from one end of campus to the other and
find not only very different buildings in front of you, but
what appears to be the exact same mountain backdrop in the
background. Apparently, the mountains around Tucson are a
giant background painting if one follows the logic used by
the hoax proponents.

Location on video identical on two days at two different sites

If one watches the actual video from the rovers TV camera, you'll
find that the two identical images were obtained within minutes
of each other from the exact same site. A small amount of
investigation easily solves the mystery. The source of this
error is a NASA documentary film in which the film editor mistakenly
claims the two filmclips were taken on different days at different
sites when in fact they were not.

Reseau marks disappear behind equipment

The Reseau marks are the "+" marks that appear on the Lunar
photographs. They are caused by marks etched on a "Reseau
plate" which is a clear glass plate mounted immediately in front
of the film on the Hasselblad camera. Film, like most all
imaging media, is not a perfect recorder. When a very bright
part of the subject appears next to a dark area, there is
often saturations effects which appear as bleeding into the
darker areas, such as the Reseau marks. It's a well known
photographic effect which the two FOX photographic "experts"
both conveniently forget to suggest.

Radiation was too high - Van Allen belts and solar storms

The hoax proponents consistently exaggerate the effects of radiation
in space. Radiation was a definite concern for NASA before the first
spaceflights, and they invested a great deal of research in it before flying the
first astronauts into space. The most dangerous part of the journey to
the moon for
radiation exposure was during the passage of the spacecraft through the Van
Allen belts. This is a zone from aobut 1000 kilometers up to about 20000
kilometers. The Apollo missions flew through this zone at very high speed -
outbound starting around 40,000 kph and inbound at about the same speed. They
spent a few hours within the Van Allen belts and estimates of the total exposure
during their entire flights were about 2 rems (the equivalent of about
100 chest x-rays
or about 40% of the maximum permissible dose of radiation according to OSHA
standards). Doses of 100-200 rems cause a person to experience nausea several
hours after exposure and fatal doses occure above about 300 rem.
Solar flares were a concern as well, but typical doses due to flares that
the Astronauts were exposed to were only a few rem. The crews wore dosimeters
which were read back roughly daily during the flights.

Temperatures on the lunar surface were too hot

Daytime temperatures reach about 250 degrees F. Nighttime temperatures
sink to a chilly -270F. The landings occured within a day or two of local
sunrise so that the sun angles were low and the surface had not heated up to its
full daytime levels. With no atmosphere, convection does not transport heat
from object to object. Conduction of heat occures only when a hot surface is
contacted and thermal radiation is the only other source of heat.
Film in a camera is
protected from direct sunlight except during exposures and a light colored or
silver camera does not absorb heat efficiently. The lunar EVA suits were
designed to withstand temperatures of +250F.

No plans to return to the moon and the Russians have never sent anyone

So if we went to the moon more than 30 years ago, why haven't we gone back, and
why haven't the Russians sent anyone to the moon? Despite the apparent ease
with which NASA flew 12 men to the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972,
traveling to the moon was difficult, dangerous and enormously expensive. The
advanced planning and preparation of the spacecraft and crews resulted in
spectacularly successful missions which succeded despite the dangers and the
inherent malfunctions of manmade equipment. The United States landed men on the
moon while the Soviet Union failed in its attempts to build a lunar program
despite its hard work. Once the U.S. succeded, the Soviets primary reason for
going to the moon was eliminated and residual work dwindled. Despite the
official word of the Soviet Union claiming that they were never in a race to the
moon, the post-Soviet Union evidence demonstrates otherwise with lunar landing
hardware and the huge N1 booster program as well as training programs for its
Cosmonauts. To fly to the moon today would be nearly as difficult and probably
more expensive (even accounting for inflation) than it was in the 1960s. Until
there is enough motivation to do so, we are unlikely to mount any new missions
to the moon in the near future.

Earth based telescopes should be able to see the Apollo equipment

A telescope's diffraction limited resolving power depends linearly on the
aperture of the telescope. Groundbased telescopes also have to look through the
murky and turbulant atmosphere so without corrective techniques that are just
now becoming common in large telescopes (called adaptive optics), a telescopes
resolution is limited by the atmosphere to about 0.5-1.0 arcseconds (3600
arcseconds are in one degree and 360 degrees around the whole sky). That limits
groundbased telescopes to a resolution of about 2 kilometers on the moon. From
space, a telescope is limited by its diffraction limited resolution. For the
Hubble Space Telescope, that is a little less than 0.05 arcseconds or about 90
meters at the distance of the moon. To resolve the LM descent stage which is
about 10 meters across, one would need to have a resolution better than 10
meters, perhaps 2-3 meters which means we need a telescope some 30 times larger
than the HST in orbit around the Earth to resolve the largest equipment left on
the moon.

Other Claims:

Grissoms crew killed to silence them

All the available evidence points towards an accidental short circuit in the
Environmental Control Unit aboard the command module which started a fire that
raged quickly out of control in the 16.7 pounds per square inch pure oxygen
atmosphere inside the cabin. To suggest a murder conspiracy based on zero
evidence is libelous.

Thomas Baron silenced

Thomas Baron released a report critical of various issues dealing with the
developement of Apollo hardware. He was somewhat outspoken after the tragic
fire which killed the Apollo 1 crew. Claims that his report has vanished are
simply false, as parts of that report (if not the entire report) are available
on the internet. Baron and his family died when their car was struck by a train
at a train crossing. Was it an accident or was it suicide? The stress on all
who worked at NASA and were involved in any way in the spacecraft was tremendous
and that large numbers NASA employs did not commit suicide in response to the
accident is perhaps surprising.